Need a second website? Know someone looking to get online? Want some extra cash after the holidays? Citymax.com is running a referral promotion for any new sites for the month of December! Refer any new sites (Including your own!) in the month of December and you will get a $40 referral Bonus in Cash! Simply fill out the form with the name of the referred site and your own site. If the referred site is activated between December 1st -31st 2014 and the referred site stays active for 2 months, you will receive $40.

Running an online business can be challenging, so we’re always looking for ways to make life easier for our customers. We’re excited to partner with several companies who may be able to enhance not just your website with CityMax but your business as a whole.

HootSuite: HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks(Facebook, Twitter etc.) from one secure, web-based dashboard. Launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audiences, and distribute targeted messages using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard.

Moo: MOO is an award-winning online print business that helps our customers print things like Business Cards, Postcards and MiniCards, making it easy for them to share information about themselves or their business in the real world.

Appointment Plus: All-in-One Online Scheduling Software provides customizable software to help businesses with all of their scheduling needs.

Zazzle: Personalized Items and trinkets, great for giveaways or brand recognition in your community and business field.

For more information click on the links above or visit the Marketing Section of your website to see if they can add value to your business and your website!

Guest Post: Adam Steele is the CEO at Nightlite Media. His expertise includes SEO, social media and email marketing. This is Part 2 of Google Local Results Changed the Game.

Overview

97% of consumers search for local businesses online. You definitely want to be there when they’re looking for you with Google Places for business.

Google wants to show its users the most relevant, up-to-date, quality information (including companies) possible. This is its mission and just one reason it is the biggest. As such, when it comes to optimizing your Google Places page, you should keep this in mind.

The following are some simple tips and guidelines to a successful Google Places page optimization. The quick tweaks will improve your chances of securing better positions for your business. Please keep in mind that Google Places is constantly changing, and what works at the time of this checklist may change dramatically in 30 days. Saying that, we have tried to keep to the things that have remained a constant for some time now.

Initial Process

Select the area/city you wish to target

Keyword Search: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Put in a word that you “think” the average person would type in Google when looking for a business in your city. (NOT the name of a business, but a word or phrase.) Example: ‘Dallas electrician’. Google will suggest other popular words below that term. View the ones that are popular and record them. Make sure you deselect broad and select exact (on the left) and focus your attention on local volume/searches, not global.

Identify keywords you would like to dominate in your local town/city and search them for yourself. Not all keywords will trigger Google Places. So, you need to make sure the ones you go forward with bring up Google Places results when you search for them.

Record on a piece of paper the top 5 -10 keywords and rank them in order of priority (keep on hand).

Submission

Search for your company to see if an existing Google Places page is already setup. Go to http://maps.google.com and put in your phone number with area code to see what comes up. Try more than one phone number if you have more than one for your business.

If after you check, you DO have a page, then you will simply want to “Edit Page” if there is anything you want to change (check below to see if your current Google Places page has the appropriate content listed below.) If you do NOT have a page after entering your phone numbers, then you will want to create one!

Creating A Google Places Page

After you have created a Google account, you will want to set up your Page. Answer every question (Leave nothing undone – Google views this as “incomplete”.)

Company Name (Without keywords) DO NOT get fancy here. Stuffing your title with keywords is just going to get you in trouble. In the past, stuffing the title offered an SEO advantage, but now it is both risky and unnecessary. Simply put your business name here as it is recognized everywhere else.

Street Address: Your business address as it occurs everywhere else online and offline. Consistency and accuracy are KEY. If your business has existed for some time, try and search your own address. Look for the most popular address for yourself and go with that one if it’s applicable–otherwise update it. You would be wise to go back and adjust all those addresses that are different than what you use in your Google Places page. NOTE: If later you decide to make any changes to your address, Google will very likely request to send you a post card before updating.

City/Town: Self Explanatory. NOTE: This is the city that you will have the best chance of ranking in for your keywords.

Main phone: Same principle as your street address. Take a look how your phone number appears already online. Is it in (xxx) or xxx? You want it to appear in Google Places the same way it does elsewhere online.

Website: Use http://www. You want it to be hyperlinked.

Description: I would typically suggest using the same one that occurs in your site’s meta data (description tag) for consistency. Keyword rich is fine, but don’t make it spammy. Also, consider your click through rate (CTR). Searchers will see this, and decide whether they want to click or not so don’t be afraid to be a bit ‘salesy.’

Category: Few things to know here. Stay the heck away from city modifiers. That is, your category should be ‘electrician’, NOT ‘Dallas electrician.’ Doing the latter will get you in trouble. Google gives you 4 custom categories and one pre-defined. Make good use of them and align them with the keywords you want to rank for. Similar to the Company/Organization field, categories are being screened and the same sensitive keywords apply. Custom categories don’t really have to be too coherent. If you have a lot of keywords you are targeting, try and combine them with other keywords, but again, not too spammy.

Service Area and Location Settings: Pretty self explanatory. It is commonly used if you are using an address outside of the city/cities that you want to rank in OR you want to rank in all your surrounding cities. Use this function to define your service area(s). NOTE: You aren’t going to rank in San Fran, if your address is in Austin. Obvious, I hope. However, if your address is in the suburb of San Fran and you want to rank in San Fran and its surrounding suburbs is doable. Being outside of the city you want to rank in puts you at a disadvantage. If you are trying to rank for a competitive keyword and you are not located in the city you want to rank in, you could be hooped.

Hours & Payment: Just make sure this is consistent with everything else that is published online.

Photos: Yes, you should add photos. Photos uploaded should be saved as ‘cityname-state-keyword’ and then uploaded. Google also gives you the option to “Add a photo from the web.” I like to add a picture from the website. This creates a connection between your Google Places page and your website. This is a good thing.

Videos: Yes, you should add video preferably of a testimonial like a customer (not you). These can be YouTube videos. Remember to make sure your files are named after a keyword.

Verification: More than likely Google will want to send a post card. The post card typically takes 5-8 business days to arrive. When it arrives, log back into your Google Places dashboard and enter a PIN code to verify and activate your listing.

Similar to my last post, there is a perk for reading. This articles perk is 3 months of FREE Google Places page optimization…a $300 value!! To enter the draw, send your answer to the following question to adam.steele@nightlitemedia.com. Also, if you like some of the tips above, follow me on twitter for more at http://twitter.com/nightlitemedia.

Question: In the categories section of your Google Places page, doing what can get you in trouble?

Last week was a very busy one with members of our website builder team heading both to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2010 and Miami for Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Summit. We met hundreds of great affiliates, networks, resellers and marketers and returned home charged and ready to go.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth at ASW 2010. To the old friends and new faces it was good to see/meet you all: Brandon Delgrosso and Jared Sidwell (DOBA), Mindy Brown and Carol-Lyn Jardine (LinkTrust), Gillian Muessig (SEOMoz.org), John Chow (JohnChow.com), Deborah Carney and Liz Ababon (TeamLoxly.com), and Alison Stewart (plus the rest of the RevenueWire crew) – just to drop a few names. Both conferences were packed and we picked up more than few marketing tips to share with you entrepreneurs out there.

Highlights!
A favorite ASW booth of ours was MarketLeverage. They gave away free hamburgers in exchange for business cards – see the pic! To wrap up ASW, our own Patrick Schrodt even won an awesome remote controlled car from the nice folks at LinkTrust.

Here are a few photos of the Las Vegas fun – and yes that’s 90s rapping legend Flava Flav…

It’s just nine days until we launch our website builder affiliate program at Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas! From January 17-19, our team will be at the CityMax.com booth (#404) at the Rio All Suite Hotel & Casino in Vegas, giving our affiliates the gold treatment and offering a chance to win a grand prize worth $100,000.

Our new program will allow the very best affiliates to promote a ‘White-hat” product offering for both the money-making online crowd and the mass market home business owner. Our one promise for Affiliates is this: We will treat you like gold!

Looking for a “white hat” product for your affiliate portfolio? Good news! We’re stepping into the game and have now launched our own website builder affiliate program!

Our official website builder affiliate program debut will be at the Affiliate Summit West 2010 conference in Las Vegas. With multiple payment platforms, aggressive payouts, and a great product, there’s a perfect option for almost every affiliate marketer. From January 17-19, you’ll find our team at the CityMax.com booth at the Rio All Suite Hotel & Casino in Vegas, treating our affiliates like gold and offering up great giveaways and a chance to win a grand prize package worth $100,000!

While we are officially debuting at Affiliate Summit West, we are currently accepting a limited number of affiliates. To learn more about our affiliate program and our Affiliate Summit West 2010 promotion, visit our CityMax.com at Affiliate Summit West website, or feel free to contact our very own Affiliate Ambassador, Kyle Murphy (1.866.310.9327 ext.146).